Artist Friendly with Joel Madden - Pete Loeffler of Chevelle

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

On this week's episode of Artist Friendly, Joel Madden is joined by Pete Loeffler of Chevelle. Chevelle, the hard-rock duo of brothers Pete and Sam Loeffler, have nine records to their name but still strive to challenge themselves. Having released their most recent album, the conceptual and sci-fi-inspired NIRATIAS in 2021, the band have largely been on the road for the last few years. They’re preparing for a short run in April following their tour with Three Days Grace in 2023. Later this year, they’ll appear at Inkcarceration, Louder Than Life, and Rock Fest. ------- Listen to their Artist Friendly conversation on ⁠⁠⁠Spotify.⁠⁠ ------- Follow Artist Friendly! IG: @artist.friendly TikTok: @artist.friendly YouTube: youtube.com/@artist.friendly ------- Host: Joel Madden, @joelmadden Executive Producers: Joel Madden, Benji Madden, Jillian King Producers: Josh Madden, Joey Simmrin, Janice Leary Visual Producer/Editor: Ryan Schaefer Audio Producer/Composer: Nick Gray Music/Theme Composer: Nick Gray Cover Art/Design: Ryan Schaefer Additional Contributors: Anna Zanes, Neville Hardman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, what's up? I'm Joel Madden, and this is artist-friendly. On today's episode, I'm talking with lead vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter of the band Chevelle, Pete Laughler. Let's go. And I really love being around, like artists when they're making records and stuff. Any given week, there's a band or there's someone here making a record or starting a record or finishing a record. and I love being around that. You know, you get to like, they'll like ask you to come listen. I love that stuff, man.

It just keeps me feeling like I'm close to the music. Yeah. So there's studios in here. There's three studios. Wow. You track drums in here and stuff like that? We can track drums in C. Yeah.

It's not a huge drum room though, but these days it feels like no one really needs a big drum room. It feels like, because all the recording stuff is so in the box. True. You can set drums up and record them. Yeah, I'm, tracking our whole new record in my house. Oh, great. In my basement. Do you have like a home studio

set up? Yeah. Great. Typically, we'd come out to LA and record in a Joe Beresey's studio, which is like legit, but man, we just like, we don't need it anymore. We just built one room. Yeah. Decked it out a little bit. You get the right mics, preamps. Yeah. Pro Tools rig going. And then we found that if we leave the door open, we put room mics out into the middle of the basement, you can sort of mix it in. Are you pretty literate with recording? What's that? Are you competent recording? I am not.

I am learning pro tools as well. Yeah. It's a new endeavor. And with, you know, I've realized how bad my eyesight is now. I'm constantly throwing on glasses and trying to like, get in there and like blow it up. You know. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's weird. Audio books are our friends. Audio books. Yeah. You listen and we. Yeah. The eyesight thing is a bitch.

Yeah. I'm not literate. recording. So I can't record, which is, I always feel like a bit like, like a fraud because I can't record. And I have so many friends who are very, I mean, I'm as experienced in age of how long we've been doing this. But man, I'm just terrible. Learning how to record has been, I've never been able to do it. I've tried. Yeah. Yeah, I had no choice. So a few years back, I had to give up on my, we were so old school. Yeah. It was just like a 24 track. digital recorder that you know i knew how to place the mics and all that because i did all our demos

that's cool but then we went to we you know they started it was obsolete i had to i had to switch over so which so logic or pro tools yeah so i'm learning as i go and it's it's cool once you get into it but the learning curve is it's there it's you know yeah i wouldn't take on the project alone yeah but you know we have a good friend engineer that we're we're trying to do our our whole new record in house all on our own. That's great. I love that. I mean, there's investment, there's time, there's stress, all of those things.

And then there's like, you know, your kids rollerblading upstairs or scootering and you're, yeah, you're texting. You're like, hey, can he take a break for a minute? Go on the Xbox, turn it down. Yeah. It sucks to do that. Yeah, but it's cool. I think it's way cooler than the way we were trained to do it, in my opinion.

I think we were trained to make records in the system of hire the producer, spend a whole lot of money on, like, not to say that producers weren't worth what they got paid, but like the studio and all the costs that were wrapped into recording, you'd spend half a million dollars making a record. And now when you look at that as like, say you're just an entrepreneur, right, and you're just starting up a business and you have a half a million dollar startup fund, which is a real. businesses get started on that kind of money. It was a shit ton of money when we started, wasn't it? Yeah. Like how, yeah. And no one was saying like, hey, entrepreneurially speaking, are you looking at all the line items of this and going like, is this the best use of this money? You were kind of just going with the idea of like, this is what rock bands do when you get

signed to a big label and you just spend a lot of money. We definitely got pulled into that. We did too. I mean, I, dude, you should tell me your story and then I'll tell you mine briefly. because it's like... Dude, we spent so much money. On your first record, second record? Every record.

Yeah. Until we got, what I would say is we matured by 30. I think it took my whole 20s for me to actually grow up. Yeah. And I think I was infantilized a lot by... The system that they put in place like you were saying. Yeah, the system, the ideas. I think you come from nothing and you're kind of like,

you come into this and you're like, what do I know? Right? My instincts, what we don't give ourselves credit for, I think, is like our instincts get us there. Our choices get us there. But then we get into a place where there's a bunch of professionals. And they're like, this is what you do. They act as if. And you kind of like give them the power to make every decision versus like exploring and making, staying in your gut and going like yes to that, no to that.

There's probably like a balance, right? Like some of it was probably right. Yeah. Some of it was probably like excessive. Absolutely. And I think it's thoughtful, mindful, decision making that you measure things and you decide. And you learn. So if we made the first record and we had spent the time to go like, hey, this is kind of like a free college course while we make this record. We could pick up some things and the next record. Maybe we do some more ourselves. I think it took me my whole 20s to grow up and get there where I was like, you know what? I kind of want to stop and reimagine how I, behave and move. And I think it's that that I learned where, where like that really changed my life,

where I felt like I was really in my life, making decisions and feeling them, versus just like on this ride where you're like kind of like eyes glazed over, just going along with it. It's crazy. In the beginning, it's just, yeah, it's everybody's throwing everything at you. And you're like, and you're burned out but you're a kid so you can deal with it. Yeah. Until you sort of grow up a little bit. I mean, it's like nobody, nobody wants to grow up. we're in rock bands. We don't want to grow up. That's why we do this.

Definitely part of us, doesn't it? Our first record was in 99, and we did it with Steve Albini. Didn't know what the hell we were doing. We just, you know, we went in there. There was basically like, you know, first take made it on the album. And we were like, well, this is what he says, you know, live and learn there. And then it wasn't a bad experience, but it wasn't a great one. You know what I mean?

Right. You know? That's fair. So learned a little bit, you know. liked him a lot. I don't know. It seems cool. We just thought it was going to be like this magical process, right?

On the first one. It wasn't. Anyway, live and learn. Can't listen to that record. Don't even promote it. Whatever. Funny. Go and sign with epic records.

Yeah, we were signing them too. Yeah, wild, right? Oh. At the same time, I think. And that was around 2001, I want to say. Yeah. But then it's like, you got, you usually. just got a $500,000 advance to make an album. You're like, I did. I made it, right? Who do you

want to make you with? And you're like, okay, well, I like this band. I like this sound, whatever. Start digging around. You meet some people. Turns out we flew to Canada the day before 9-11. So we flew to Canada and the planes hit the towers. So our brother, youngest brother, flew in, I think it was that morning the morning before. That experience was even worse, honestly. So that was the record that sort of like put us on the map and we toured for a year without it,

just playing like these songs at Ozfest. And then people are like, you don't have a record out. Why are you on tour? I'm like, I don't know, this is how they want you to do it. You know, like, okay, so Canada is beautiful and great. It should have been an amazing thing.

But the producer we chose literally was like talking behind her backs. to the label, making problems, separating the band members, which were all brothers at that point, and making riffs. Garth Richardson. Okay. I don't know him. So he did Rage Against the Machine's first album.

And we're like, well, this can't get a bad move. Right? You know, so, you know, I mean, I don't want to, like, take it negative, but I'm just telling you, like, no, the truth is the truth. I'm trying to elaborate a little bit on, on, like, how crazy things are when you first start and you start working with new people. And so what ended up happening is like he would get coked up, throw parties, break shit. Really?

And we're all just, yeah, we're just sitting there like, what's up? And then like he would belittle us. He would like, he would say your country's going to war. Now you've got to stay here. You can't ever go home. Bullshit like that, right? Yeah. So.

You could certainly drive if you wanted. So he would use this intimidation factor. And you're young and you're still inexperienced and you still don't want to upset anyone. because you don't want to fuck your opportunity up. And then you have this guy doing Coke. Listen, I don't think there's a difference in shit talking and sharing your experience. I just don't believe that anyone shouldn't be able to share their experience, even if it's up me, right? If someone had a bad experience with me, I'm open to hear it and go, well, at that time, I was going through this or some context.

By the way, he may have great context to what he was going through at the time. Maybe he's a different guy now. Yeah. But like at the time, I've certainly had those experiences too, where you come in and I was never, I was never like a drug user or wild party person. I mean, I go to a party and hang maybe, but like I was definitely not the center of the wild party. Yeah.

Yeah, same. And there were certainly people that would come around and thought this is what that is. And they're trying to bring that to your world where because they think like that's what this must be and you're kind of like whoa that's not what this is yeah we like to have fun but like there's a there's speeds and there's limits to that stuff and I was always a little uncomfortable with like the crazy side of it because I came from a world of real people who struggled with addiction and things like that so I was always around that my whole life and so that triggers me big time when I'm around people that are struggling with their in their early stages of addiction where

they're not even realizing they're when you can see it but they can't see it yet right i struggle with that i get triggered it's hard to be yeah it's hard for me i was just talking about this i think it's like seeing a potential because i was always worried about that yeah and i think it's like when i see that potential it triggers me because i see a little bit of myself in them in the sense of like what i came from yeah and it were it it triggers me big time so i didn't do well with like coked out producers and people that came around a party. Yeah, it turns out we didn't either. He, like, split the band up.

Some people went home. That's suck. Spent all the money, 500 grand. Oh, easy. I didn't get anything out of it. I didn't even get a guitar that I remember. Yeah. And it was like, yeah, we were there for like two and a half months.

And then one day, Sam and I were looking at each other. And we're like, they're not sure what, they're not sure what to do. But what do you want to do on the record next? And I was like, I think it's good. You want to just bail? So we ended up bailing out of the studio. It wasn't even really done. We were just like, we're done.

We're just wised up. Which record was that? It was wonder what's next. Okay. Yeah. And then so how did you finish it? You know, it was basically done. It was basically done.

So it was like, I think if I go back to that and think about it, it's probably like, you take your experience now and you know what to do. But at the time, I had no, I was like, it sounds good to me. It sounds heavy. Let's just mix it and see where it sits. Yeah. That's what we did. And then, you know, we just went on tour and it was good.

We did Ozfest opening, you know, play at 9.30 in the morning, side stage. Yeah. Met all these great people, great bands, you know, friends. Everybody's doing the same thing, you know. Ozfest was crazy. It was like, you know, it was almost like if you could get on it, you were like, it was a different time. You were in a club. You were going to do something.

You're going to move the needle. Yeah. It sort of felt like back then. Yeah, it was a real thing. It's like a ride of passage to be able to get to get to do that. Yeah. But then the next year they invited us back to open the main stage. That was wild because it was like us, corn, I want to say Manson, disturbed, and then Ozzy.

And we were just like happy to be in the mix at that point because you're like, something's actually clicking. You know what I mean? So different times, you know, it was a while back. I mean, it was a long time ago. I'm over 20 years ago. I know, because that was 2003. That's like some OG shit. Yeah.

Ozfest is the OG Ozfest? That's OG like metal shit. Yeah, for sure. That's cool. It was fun. It was a lot of fun. They should bring it back, honestly. I mean, I know Ozzy is struggling with health stuff and that sucks.

But, you know, that sort of brand does hold a lot. Yeah. It was fun. Yeah. What album? number is this one that you're working on? This one is technically 10, but I call it 11 because I've had to write 11, you know, this would be 11 albums worth of material. When you factor in the B sides and stuff like that, you know, each album needed three, you know, or two, whatever you could do.

But man, so I've written every single song for this band from the start from the get-go. You know, you'd go on tour and you come home they'd be like it's time to get in the studio and it took me many years this goes back to what you were saying about like people pushing you and you know you're kind of brainwashed in a way because you're like how do you have that sort of like um impact when you're only in a tour bus riding around you're not really experiencing life the way you used to where you wrote those records before yeah where you're living you have like all your you're you know your life to write that first record you know yeah or the second record whoever it was for us but um you go on the road and you come back what am i going to say now you know like it's it's a weird

thing man writing now is difficult yeah i found yeah why do you think i think it's a um hard to find a new i'm 47 so it's like the last it was like i had 20 years of like putting out a record every two and a half years yeah and then i hit a wall and the last one took five years what was that that was neuradius okay and and you're sitting there and you're like what year was that so 21 you know 2021 so from 2016 to 21 you you it took you that long to yeah figure out that record and of course 2020 happened so maybe we could have chiseled a year off of that time yeah yeah because of yeah yeah i feel like that we have we put a record out in 2018 we haven't put out a record since and now we're talking about making a record which i feel really good about it's the first

first time in six years that I've kind of gone like, yeah, I kind of really want to write a record. And it's taken a long time to get there. But I'm at a place now where I just let myself be where I'm at. Yeah. I'm not forcing it. Because you know, when you have a family and you have, yeah, I really like that there's something more important than music in my life. Really like that. That's really interesting to hear. And it's kind of like, it's kind of like calming to hear it too as like being in the biz and it's like we put out a record in 2021 and it was hard to move the needle then because people the world was so crazy really tough and you're like how do you you know I suspect you'll have a really good experience putting this next record out I think it's a really

good time for rock music yeah and you guys are just like oh geez you guys really have just this long rich history catalog a depth of experience and knowledge likely more bands that you don't even know are bands you might not even be aware of that are like fans like I think if you go out into the world with the next record you're going to have a really good experience of what it means to be in Chevelle in 2024 you know what I mean I appreciate that very much I mean I feel like I've just been stumbling through it the whole time I mean that's how all of us feel you know what I mean that's how all of us feel that's kind of what it means to be an artist and an entrepreneur and a self.

Yeah. Trial and error, man. And it's just like no one knows. It's always foggy to some degree. But I think that when I realize like that's just how it feels and I embraced kind of like the chaos of what we do. Yeah. And not knowing exactly how we're going to get there, but we're going to get there.

I've started to enjoy that aspect of it where I used to be afraid of it because it used to kind of make me feel anxious and make me feel. Yeah. A little confused or whatever. And now I kind of feel like, oh, the chaos and the fog of going forward and trying to figure out what the next move is. I think it gets you back to the truth of the things, which is your gut and your instincts are really all you have. Yeah. As well as all your experience, which is decades.

If you look at being in Chevelle and look at decades of experience as a, if you were any other profession, a doctor or a lawyer. or a scientist of some kind, someone who's a master of something. Sure. They've mastered cooking or they've mastered whatever. That experience means a lot. In music, it doesn't get accounted for all the time. They could say like, oh, it's cool. You guys have been around forever.

But the actual real experience of being able to understand and make a decision and be accurate. A critical thinking aspect that comes with experience does. There is something there, and I hear what you're saying. It's real. It's not nothing. It's stressful as hell, but yeah, it's definitely, there's something there. But I think you guys are going to have a really good time with it. I think you're going to have a lot of success with it.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I hope so. I think so. On the last album, Neradius, I was actually considering making it the last album for us, based on solely switching gears with the environment and trying to just go to something that's less stressful for me personally, which is like maybe to set the album aside for a minute and to just put out a song or two when they're done. So I work when I want to work, put out the song when it's feeling right.

Because when you have to write and you think about an album of 10 songs, I have to weed through all the shit to get to those good parts. And then you have to refine those good parts. So you have to write 30, 40, 50 songs, whatever. And so you have a catalog of stuff you can go to, but it's also, it takes so much time to get through to the good stuff. And you're like, so that's really my question now is as much as I'm 47, so I lived on albums.

I lived on, you know, Lala ploosa would come to town. I went to the first three of them. All my heroes, they made albums. but now with streaming and you want to you know i remember we put out uh naradius and it was 21 and i think it was right before we changed management or fired management and they were like well yeah okay so you got to start working on the next thing because it's it's been a year and that album's it's you know tanked it's done that's a funny way of describing it yeah and it was like we ultimately ended up leaving them and disagreed.

And you know, you can go on tour. Bands like us, we've been around that long. You can go on tour and just you can play. You have enough music. Yeah. And people will come out. They will and they support, you know, we have amazing fans. I'm sure you do as well.

Yeah. And that's the sustaining factor of our whole career is these incredible fans that. Yeah. And then you'll see like these young, a young generation of fans. Like for us, we've seen it like this. this new generation of like rock fans that are getting into music for the first time. Yeah. You know, albums for the first time.

And there's an energy around it that's pretty cool. But it's interesting to say an album tanked when someone like in the music business says that. I'm always like, tanked. It's a terrible description of. Yeah, it didn't end well with that management team. Yeah, like, you know. There is a version of an album living and taking root somewhere over time. And so that's why I think you just got to make the album you love and put it out.

Always. And then let it live. I think if you make art you love and you have had success before, so it's not like you're trying to see if your brand of art could resonate with people. You've already done that. Now it's about making art that you think is cool, that you like, that you think is neat, that you like want to show people and then let it live and breathe in the world and let it find its way. Did you ever find it difficult to write lyrics at times? You're just like, you're just

like in this stagnant place. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Like what am I going to write about? I ended up pulling from places I've never pulled from when I was like, all right, this is, I don't know what to say anymore. So I'd watch like a, I'd stay up late and I'd watch like a 60 minutes episode on this, this literally happened. Maybe it wasn't 60 minutes. So it was some like late night show about Bernie Madoff, who there's this huge Ponzi scheme that he made. Yeah.

And I'm like, okay, I don't think I care anymore. I'm just going to start writing shit, you know, that I've experienced and see what happens, right? Yeah. And just put my experience into those lyrics even more so than I used to because, you know, you're, you have to pull from everywhere. And I think along the way, my journey, I was like, I wasn't doing any other hobbies. I was just doing music. You know, I wasn't, I quit,

I didn't quit skateboarding, but it was like, you're getting golden. You're like, okay, if I skate ramp half pipe today, I could break a wrist. You set things aside and you're only focused on music. And I heard Billy Corrigan from the Pumpkins talk about in an interview. He's like, they were asking why he does like WWE wrestling stuff. And he's like, if you don't have outside hobbies that you're pulling from and doing and experiencing life that are not music what are you going to write about and so it really like affected me in a way i was like oh that that makes so much sense so now i'm on this like other journey to find what what else there is in my life obviously have my you know family and my amazing home life and that is great but when you talk about writing rock music and you need you need

some experiences you know whatever that is what are your hobbies you know you should shit like that. Yeah. So that's one thing I'm trying to change. I think that that is probably where I got to is over the course of building a family and then actually wanted to succeed at it because that's a whole different story. Yeah. Right?

It's having a family is one thing. Having a functional family that feels like a success. Yeah. It takes effort. And you're not the lead singer in that. I think it's not easy, is it? It's not easy. It's not easy when you come out of a bubble where everything.

is served up to you. That's what touring is. Touring is a bubble that you don't have to think about anything. You get a day sheet. You look at it. You know where you're supposed to be at what time. Someone's taking you and look, it's a fun job. It's a really cool way to see the world. But is it reality in relationship to like other people? Not to me. Yeah. No. I see what you mean. Having something like I said earlier, having something more important the music matters a lot to me. Because it gives me a sense of reality that I think is important. And when I come back to the music, I still feel like there's a lot at stake, which I think is

important to do anything. I feel like there should be stakes. There should be like something that feels like I need to do well. But I don't feel like. A sense of purpose. Yeah. Yeah. Drive to succeed, all that.

But I do feel like. less concerned about the results. Yeah. It's more about making something that I really love. Maybe that'll make better music too. Hope so. You know. We'll see.

I mean, I don't know. Yeah. Who knows? The stress aspect is something that I'm dealing with recently, like the past year. So I've had some weird issues happen with my hands and when you're a guitarist. What are the issues? So I've seen eight different doctors and it started about a year ago, but I'll be, I'll be rehearsing.

Maybe I'll do a workout. One day I was doing chin-ups. You know, it's all body weight stuff. I don't use a lot of weights, but I'm not trying to bulk up. I'm trying to like just be healthy. Yeah, yeah, a little long time. Try to eat healthy all those things. You know, I got a nine-year-old.

I got to keep up with him. Yeah. So I'm working out. And I go and I start playing bass and I'm writing his riffs. And my finger starts to balloon up. My pointer finger, which I hold my pick with. and the knuckle, I think it's some kind of infection or whatever. It goes down, I get, you know, I get, like, treated for it.

Is it like neurotic? So they think it's autoimmune, and so we're trying to find out what's going on. And the latest installment of, you know, the rheumatologist I saw said, it's called Raynods disease, which, or syndrome. And it's brought on by, you know, environment, um, dress. Stress is definitely one of those things. A cold climate, we live in Chicago, so I'm writing in my cold basement,

which I didn't realize it was cold. It was 70 degrees, 69 degrees, but you go down there and you're like, maybe you'll run outside, do something. And if you don't wear gloves, it'll bring blisters out on the ends of your fingers. And I'm really thinking that stress is playing a big part in that. Yeah, and that's what he was saying too.

So it's like, it's like that aspect of, you know, it's, you want to get, you when you work, you want to get something done that you think is quality. But again, at the same time, if you've been writing music songs for 30 years, you know, there is almost like a point where you're just, you know, asking those questions. You're like, am I relevant anymore? Is this relevant? You know, rock music is what it is. It's, you know, there's all these stupid questions that infest your brain when you're, when you're trying to write.

So that's my little journey right now. I'm on and I'm trying to find out. And it's gone away now and I didn't take antibiotics. So I know it's some type of whatever. I got to be honest with you. As hard as it might be, I think it's a really great journey. When you said stress, the first question that popped up in my head was, what are you stressed about? like what where is the stress coming from what is left for you to do or prove yeah that's a question

i've been asking you're right i just wonder that i just wonder from the outsider and we don't really know each other we met a couple times i've always been a fan i don't know if you remember back in the day we used to have an m tv show yeah and we used to get to program videos and we played your stuff all the time. That's awesome. And I always liked your band. I felt I felt like you took a lot of my favorite parts of tool like Manner's voice and yours is similar, but you are like all the best parts in my opinion. I'm a little bit more of like a little bit more melody sometimes and all my favorite parts of tool songs are the melodic parts. Yeah. And the guitar work on your records, the heavy parts all of it like i've always just been a fan of your brand of like heavy rock and i've always loved

heavy music and wish i made heavy music like i've always been a heavy music fan yeah um especially like melodic heavy music one of my favorite bands is architects you know architects yeah i love architects yeah is their melodies just like hit so well for me yeah i was late to the game on them but they're so good i know i was like holy shit i slept on this band and they're just like Great guys. They're just great guys. So it makes you love the band even more when you get to know them. And they're like, oh, my God.

Bad Omen's melodic, heavy, like. They're hitting hard right now. They're really hard. But you guys are back 20 years ago making melodic, like sweet melodies and spots, angry, angry spots, like all the things that I like in heavy music. I think that it's interesting because I look at, when I hear you say that, I'm like sitting as an outsider going like, well, what's the stress? Because I feel like there's nothing left to prove.

Yeah. And it's all icing. And if you ask me, like, how's good Charlotte today? I'd be like, this is the best it's ever fucking been. Yeah. That's a good place to be. Actually, it's funny, you say that because I would say the same thing. As far as the touring side of it, I would say the same thing.

We're the happiest we've ever been. We've had some ups and downs. with some other members and it's been difficult here and there. But that's people, that's life. Yeah. That's like. But as of right now, as far as like clicking as far as the live show goes, it's been great. But you and your brother.

Yeah. It's always been us too. I always kind of romanticize everything because I like to think in stories. And when I see brothers doing something, I really love it because it's like a hero story to me. Like everyone loves the brother's story. Yeah. Because we all want to believe that we. could do that with our brother. Not all this do. Yeah. And it does, for us, it worked for a minute.

It worked to, uh, it helped to get us on the map, I think, because it was three brothers. Right. And a three piece, you know, and the Hanson, you know, jokes never, never stopped, you know, in the, uh, in the interviews and shit. But yeah, it was like, they were, they were pretty cool for their age. They were, I give them credit, man. They try, they do try and like put you. There, oh, three brothers. That comes to my. It has to being twins. Yeah, how is that? That's the thing everyone says.

They're twins and they sing. Oh, that's great. You're like, oh, we're just brothers, but we are twins. But we're also, like we feel more like brothers than twins, even though we're best friends. Yeah. The twin thing as like a selling point always kind of irked us. But what are we going to do? That's what.

Yeah, you probably got a lot of those same questions. Like, it was always, it was always about the brothers with us too. and then that imploded on itself. So, and then we had to talk about that. Did your third brother, what's his name? His name was Joe. Joe, he left? Yeah.

And was that like a not in a good? No, it wasn't, no, it was. It wasn't like a conscious uncoupling type thing? No, it was rarely good. Okay. It was rarely good. What do you think that was? Well, I haven't spoken to him in probably coming up to 20 years now.

Really? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's tough. it's not tough now it wasn't even it wasn't even tough after it happened it was so ugly in the band at that point I think he was really young when we started and how old was he I think he was 16 that's that's young and and and then we started touring I think it was around she's I have to go back and look probably in his

18 19 that's still young oh yeah hell yeah it's so young so I mean were you guys really close growing up It was like cliques in my family because we were a huge Catholic family of seven kids. Oh, wow. Yeah. So it was like cliques. You'd have like older sisters kind of hung out. Then it was Sam and I in a sort of not, not, we didn't know that. That's just how I sort of like.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Invision it. Maybe it was like, I don't know. Are your parents, were they always married? Yeah. Okay. And then they were like my two younger brothers, they were to get sort of hanging out together always. So when he started hanging out with us, the older brothers, I don't know.

there was probably tension that I didn't know was there. I don't really know. I know that there's some issues there going on there. Some on the mental side. So I just try to shit happens. That happened. It was a long time ago. But I mean, live and learn.

It helped where it did help. And then other areas, you know, it just didn't work out. Yeah. It's not, it's not, I don't know if we're necessarily made to work with family members in any capacity. It's probably not safe. I don't think we are. If it could work.

If it works, but I do think one thing we had to do by 30, our 20s, we had no idea what we were doing. And you could say that about our career. You could also say that about our personal growth. Yeah. We had no understanding of what we've been through. Yeah. Because we had like trauma.

And then you come out of the trauma and you make this art. art. And then the art goes into the world and everyone kind of like, you know, in some ways it's great because you have the success story, right? And in other ways, everyone's kind of diminished and written, kind of like your trauma becomes, they can dismiss it, they can throw it away, they can make fun of it, they can do lots of things with it. And all the music just, to me, was us working a lot of shit out. Yeah. And because we didn't have therapy, we didn't have an understanding of like, how do I grow and how do I understand my experience? And so then when I started really working on myself and I was like late 20s, 29, 30,

I was completely underdeveloped emotionally. I was way immature. I still am. I still am in some ways, but I did a lot of work on myself for the last 15 years. I'm probably a little over analytical of things because of that, but I don't mind it because I wasn't at all aware when I started on this side, I may overanalyze some emotional things and I may be a little too therapeutic when you know my kids are growing up in a very stable home they don't really need to work a whole lot out yeah so when i'm like hey let's stop let's talk

about that let's talk about how you feel they're like dad stop i'm fine and i appreciate i had none of that neither did i no one was asking me how i felt that being said me and my brother did not know how to communicate and we did a pretty good job for kids who didn't know how to communicate and also didn't know how to process things, didn't know how to unpack anything, didn't know how to make our repair, if we hurt each other, all that stuff. And we would have imploded, I think. But that's what drove us to, like, yo, I think I had met my wife and she was like the first person. It was like, hey, maybe you guys should like go talk to someone and like work it out. Yeah. And then we did. And then it just started building on that. And now we have this great relationship where we never fight. We talk about

everything. If he hurts my feelings, I'm like, yeah, that really hurt my feelings. And we'll talk about it. And then it's done. And that's healthy. Yeah. See, we tried that as three brothers. Yeah. We tried it multiple times with therapists just to make it work because, you know, you work so hard to get somewhere. You're finally, okay. Yeah, you want to. You're like, it was 2004, I want to say. And you're like, all right, well, let's just get to the bottom of it. And we did it a few times different people. and therapists were throwing their hands up in there. Like, because someone in the band couldn't even describe why they were, what they're upset over or why they were angry.

It wasn't ever going to work because you had two brothers that were like, we're willing to make this work and one that's not. So it's like, how do you, you know, somebody, you know. Yeah, we need cooperation. It's just not, and that's how we knew it wasn't ever going to work. Yeah. It was like, there was just something that was beyond. There's got to be a want for a relationship on both sides.

Yeah. You can try, but like to work, it has, you have to cooperate with one another and try. Yeah. And so it doesn't work if both sides aren't. I grew up in a very strict, very religious. Yeah, very, very Catholic. I was actually the reason, like I left the Catholic church at, it was right around 15, 16, right when I got a car. Yeah, as soon as I could drive.

I was out. Yeah. No more mass. And that was a huge, that was a huge fight with my father. And it didn't go well. But it doesn't usually go well when someone's stuck in a rigid belief system where there's no room for any other, anything else. I just learned, you know, I can't, I just, I don't even talk about it with certain people.

Yeah. Because there's, there's just, it's like Neil Legress Tyson said once. I don't talk about if a certain topic for more than five minutes, if it's feeling stressful in any way, because it'll turn into an argument. And he goes, why am I going to argue? He's like over certain topics. Of course. You know, like, okay. And I've just kind of adopted that a little bit.

And like if it starts to go that way, beliefs are your beliefs, whatever you personally hold. Yeah. And I actually listened to the M Shadows interview you did with him. I love that. On this podcast. Yeah, I love that. You know, I happen upon your podcast. And because I like music podcasts, comedy and psychologically, like paranormal, but also

like self-help. So I, those four things. And, you know, you doing this with other musicians, I kind of eat it up because I live in Chicago. And so I don't live in L.A. I don't live in New York. So I have a lot of friends in the biz. but not a lot of them in my home.

Yeah. See? And so I eat it up when I hear people's stories, other musicians. Yeah. And your conversation with him was really interesting. It was really- He's the best. But I eat it up too because I love talking to other musicians

and these are the conversations we'd be having if we were backstage. If you guys were playing some festival and we haven't seen each other in 20-some years and you know, I'd be interested in talking to you. But a lot of times in real life, things come between that. And so I wanted to do this because I'd been having those kind of conversations when I got the chance to. And I always got a lot out of them because I found other people's

experience really informed my experience. And then maybe there's aspects of things I didn't quite understand, but you share something and it makes sense to me. And then I go, oh, I just have a new perspective. That's going to live in my brain and work itself out. Well, certainly in the music business, you know, it's so small, really. And, you know, it's, you know, it's, It's obviously big. I mean, there's more songs being uploaded to Spotify and the streamers every day than they're, you know, whatever, more and more every day. But especially when we started 20-some years ago, it seemed like it was small.

There's this like group, even though it was like, you know, there's a lot of people involved, but it was still like everybody knew everybody almost. It was like, and you mentioned you're like, you were in your style of music and he was in his, you know, and more of the metal genre, whatever, that people might be surprised. that you were good friends. Yeah. I think that's why this resonates so well is because as a musician that's been in this career for so long, to hear someone else talk about their struggles in the beginning or

even still, you know, it's so therapeutic, you know, as I'm working out. I'm just like, holy shit, they dealt with signing their publishing away too like we did. Or, you know, we got it back eventually. Yeah, good. I'm glad. You know, we signed for eight records with epic records. Back in the day, that's what you. And we finished that contract.

Unbelievable. So to hear like other people go through things like that and anyway, it's, I think it's a I love that. That's the whole reason I do this. I get so excited every time I have every new, like driving here, I have a whole process because I don't prepare for conversations. I just listen to the music, and that's my whole preparation. I'll just listen to your music last night and this morning

and just get back in my Chavelle mind. And then- Hearing it on the TV show that you had? Which, by the way, when you got that, when you guys got that, Sam were like, fuck, man, this is how you do it. They're doing it right. They have a TV show, and I have TV.

We just try. It was just like. We've always tried anything we could. It was huge. I mean, it was cool. It was cool. Well, you mentioned going with your gut before. Yeah.

And that is definitely something that my brother and I have tried to do as well. You know, I mean, you really do. If you can apply that, you know, you know, maybe you can put something out that you really love. And that's really what's scary is like as an artist is like when you start out, it's like you are being pulled. So go with you have to go with your gut because you have to play that shit every night and you have to be okay with what you put out. It's part of your legacy. And then you can say, well, does legacy, it's not everything. So you have to also take those hits sometimes when you put out a bad video or something like that, which we've done.

I hate videos. I hate making videos. I didn't like making videos in the beginning. I don't like it. And I still don't like it. I still don't like it. But I like it a little more now. The last couple of real decent.

But that's something. You're living and learning. Yeah. Anyway. So yeah, I mean, don't, don't, yeah, don't change your art for anybody. Live and die on your, in your time, right? Yeah, I think it's like lean into how you feel. Lean into the feeling.

The more you can lean into the feeling and run away from overthinking something. Yeah. And just lean into the good feeling. Lean into the good feeling. And I think on the other side of it, you'll have something that feels good. Yeah. I think that's especially true with music. Yeah.

Because we're creating, you know, sound, but it gives you, it can give you feelings. So whatever that is, you can run the gamut. So Sam and I used to say all the time to each other in the beginning. We were like, dude, I think we won the lotto a little bit. And maybe that's like good and bad in a way because we were looking around and seeing so many bands that wanted to get some more. I don't think you guys won the lotto. I think to feel lucky is a great feeling.

It's gratitude. And I think that's what it was. But like, man, you guys are good. Well, I appreciate that. I'm not good at taking a compliment. I know. I appreciate that. Most people aren't in our, most artists aren't funny.

But like, I also feel compelled, like, to say things when I see someone. Yeah. And I used to, like, maybe hold back. I think you guys are, I think the feeling of gratitude is great. So to feel like I won the lottery, that's how I feel about my fucking kids. I just feel like hit the lottery. Yeah. The good kids, right?

But the truth is, is like with this. is there's some luck involved, but we had to go down the road and keep showing up and keep working past the nose or the disappointments along the way to meet the opportunities that we met. I don't know that it would have gone the same if it was someone else. I think you guys are good. Well, trying to do it one more time, one more time. I think you just got to do it. We'll see, you know.

Yeah, five years in the last one, and I'm trying to do this one in was 21. So it's not 24. Yeah, I mean, we've tracked 10 full, full length songs at this point for the new album. We signed a new contract to put out one more. So we're in the process of finishing that up. So there's definitely one more coming. It's great. I don't know, do you think I'm crazy when it comes to if you're starting to put out a song

when it's done? Like I was saying, instead of waiting for a finished album. No, not at all. I think you should do, I think that you should listen to that. And if you want to do it, you should just do it. Something to try and see what happens. It can't hurt. It's just something I'm thinking about.

Because like maybe not spending all this time to get a body of work where you have a body of work already to tour on where we already don't play all these other songs. And I'd like to. I think you should do whatever the fuck you want when you want. Fuck yeah. I agree that. You write a song and you're like, this is badass. I want to put it out. I would start, I would put it out.

It's not like you're going to stop making more songs. Let's do it right now. I'm going to pull my phone out. Post-debut. I think there's something to that. And I think that you should listen to your feelings when it comes to things like that because there's no downside of doing that. Zero downside.

Yeah, try some shit. New shit, right? And I think it's cool. I think it's modern and cool. And I also appreciate albums. And I think albums are really back. I think people listen to albums now. So I think it's cool that you're going to make an album,

but I also think if you want to release a song, you should release a song. Yeah, right on. When's the new music going to come? So it's hard to say when it'll, you know, it's kind of stewing right now. We're kind of, so we did eight songs, set them aside, took a break,

did two more recently. I was actually just wrapping it up yesterday, the second song. and burned a mix so I could listen to it on the plane on the way here. Man, I just, I got to go revisit those other eight now and say, are they done? You know, we mixed one and it sounded great. And then I'm super happy about it. That whole process started again.

I went back and I listened to it. I was like, can I make, can I rewrite this song as a just kind of a, you know, something to try and wrote an entirely different model of that song again? And this is what Pro Tools will get you into. And you're like, oh, I can quickly do something that in the past, I'd have to sit down and map out with my brother in real time. So it's good and bad, you know. You know, it's good and bad.

I think it's great. Yeah, I mean, the only bad side is that you're spending, I'm spending the time to learn that system instead of writing. But, you know, if you want it to at this point, You could have a guy come to do it. Yeah, and we do mostly, but this is when he's not there. So I'm like, all right, I'll just dabble. So it's all good.

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of a per year for a euro a month in Shopify dotes bar records. Yeah, I think

that's great. It's taking the time to, to gain a competence that you didn't have and I think that's like

something I haven't done and I love that. It's not that I don't have the time you have the time to do anything you want to do and then you

prioritize, what do you really want to do? I'm reading a book right now called the power of habit. Oh, that's cool.

I like that. It sounds real. Yeah. And it's like it's all about how if you, whatever you spend your time doing that, that habit, you know, whether it's good or bad, it's in there, you know. And how if you really do truly want to change something and maybe get rid of a bad habit or to learn a new, some new process you want to go through. And how to, you know, how it's not as difficult.

as we think. You know, people struggle with certain things. And it's just a positive thing to hear. You're like, oh, yeah, okay, I've always wanted to maybe dabble in some other type of art. Okay, maybe I want to try painting or maybe I want to learn how to brew beer or something like that, you know.

And it's like, it's really our habits that if we can harness those, we can do pretty much anything. To me, that is like a life is a group of habits. What we spend our time doing. those are like you just said those are our habits and so if we if we can stop and look at our habits and remove the bad ones there are so many levels to that right i may have a habit of saying things i may have a habit of interacting with certain people a certain way i may have a habit of doing you know then there's physical habits am i do i have a physical habit that improves my health

Do I have habits that decrease my health? Yeah. And that's what this book starts to make you look at. Yeah. You're like, oh, what are mine? I really believe in that. Yeah. I kind of live by that too.

Yeah. I didn't read that book though. At this stage in my therapeutic life and my therapy life, I'm looking more at habits less at like I've done a lot of the healing, a lot of the personal growth around like understanding, you know, how to process. my feelings and my experiences and I'm past that to where now I mostly focus most of the time on habitual stuff yeah and and there's so many many there's so many layers to your habits at work your habits at home your habits in overall you know health and fitness family work there's like

different categories you have so many habits in each area that you can look at and go like what are my good habits and how can I improve those and make them even better and how can I keep like pushing it forward and becoming more optimal and then what are my bad habits how can I lessen those you can't just get rid of them you have to almost like turn the dial slowly most of the time I think yeah probably so it's like nudging it all to the places you need want it to go yeah it's not like a rip off the band-aid kind of a thing where you're like what you know whatever it is you're like trying to change and that's what this book says do it's like like it's a little bit at a time yeah it's incremental you know so i think what you think will be the best thought

especially if it's your best thought yeah i think what anyone else thinks isn't the best thought i think the ball of wax is the ball of wax and you got to i i really do believe like the more the more you kind of recognize that and go yeah it's a big fucking ball of wax that i got to i'm just letting it sit i i think it it could be done but like i think that your thought on that is going to be the most important one and i think that if like if if some band that was new god bless them if i'm a fan whatever was telling you what time it was for the for your record i'd laugh because you're you've got this light half of your life in this thing you've got so much experience and an understanding of this thing.

It makes me remember something. Sorry to cut you off. Go ahead. You know, for any new band out there starting, something that we did that was really powerful early on, we started saying no to a lot of shit. Yeah. And in the beginning, it's like you don't know necessarily

what is the most important. So you do everything or you pull, push and pulled. But when we started saying no, we were like, okay, so you actually get that time to reflect on whether or not you thought it was going to be good anyway. Yeah. So and in so many areas in this business, you got to say no. Got to know what no feels like.

Yeah. I mean, we pulled the plug on videos because we showed up and it was the wrong thing. It was like, oh, it morphed in this guy's head to what he wanted to do instead of ours. Anyway, so any younger fans out there to say no. You got to know what no feels like. Got to know it. It's important. really powerful when you know what yes feels like and when you know what no feels like yeah it's great man

i'm stoked i got to talk to you yeah man thanks for having me on i was very cool to to chill with you thanks for coming on i'm a big fan talk about old times a little bit but new times as well i'm excited for the album yeah yeah yeah thanks man when are you going on tour uh april we got like short run 10 days. So we don't tour as much as we used to because we say no. Yeah. It's hard to tour when you have a family. I love it when I'm out there. Yeah.

You know, you want it to be right. You want it to be, I don't know, you use all the experience and you just make good decisions. So hard. I really want a tour. I really want to do like a world tour. I want to figure it out. But we have a lot of stuff to factor in, you know? Like all of us have families.

my wife works my brother's wife works all the other guys have wives they work like everybody's in their life and you got to figure out like how to make it all work for everyone yeah um a lot of balls to juggle and then how long can you do like what how many is what what's your limits on like how do you work that out yeah that's crazy we we usually we try and cap it at three weeks that's smart because we know it goes to four weeks yeah so You know it's usually at a month. You're out for a month and you know, okay, I can do four weeks. But we did a run with corn and coat orange.

Oh, cool. A little while back. I actually listened to that pot, Jamie Morgan? Yeah, I had Jamie Morgan. Yeah. I really like him. He's nice. Yeah.

I got to know him a little bit down the road. They're a great band. Heavy as fuck. They are heavy. Those dudes really, they are, they care so much. about what they do. Yeah, they do. You can't deny it.

Yeah. Well, I can't wait. See, to hear the record. Yeah, man. I'm definitely going to listen now and go like. I hope you like it. I hope people dig it. I mean, that's all we, you know.

Yeah. I hope I like it too. I think you will. Appreciate that. Nice work. Good job. Awesome, man. Thanks for coming.

Yeah. Thanks for having me. hope you enjoyed today's episode of artist friendly if you really liked it you can follow like subscribe to the show anywhere you listen to podcasts spotify apple amazon we appreciate your support and we'll see you next time bad times